Impact of Colonialism on Education and Development

British were god-awful because they have the

worst imperial mentality of any country in

the world. So Britain industrialized first, roughly

seventeen hundred, and then the difference of

economic might was translated into

geopolitical imperial power, and then went

overseas and kicked the shit out of the rest of the world, basically.

It completely colonized Indian subcontinent.

It invaded China in 1839. Britain

went in and took over much of Africa and took over much of America, of

course. The Indian-

Also Cyprus.

And the first rule of empire is you

extract from your colonies, you take the resources away,

you keep them poor, and you keep them uneducated also.

All that empire, they didn't wanna give schools,

they didn't wanna educate

anybody. So literacy rates in 1950, five percent.

In some countries, with four or five people with a high school

education

out of millions. And since education is the main route to

economic development, colonies everywhere just fell

farther and farther behind. So as technology had

improved in Europe, it had not really improved in the

colonies. There was plantations and mining, uh,

extracting resources, not building industry

based on improved skills and education.

And so the gap of power widened from

1800 to 1950. We call it the era of

economic divergence. And so the world divided between the

so-called developed and developing countries.

So it was a very, very brutal period up through the middle

of the

twentieth century. Then Europe had two

devastating civil wars, basically, World War I and

World War II, two bloodbaths with the Great Depression

in

between. But after World War II, what had been that

age of divergence gradually turned into an

age of convergence. And by 1945, Europe

was exhausted. The deaths and destruction were so

vast that every energy was towards rebuilding rather than

colonies. So one by one, the colonies became independent, free

from the yoke of Britain, some because independence was

granted and others because they fought wars of liberation.

But between 1945, basically in the

1970s, most of the European

empires

vanished. And one very important thing happened

when that

occurred. You now had independent nations, and just about the

first thing that they did was introduce mass literacy and mass

education. Suddenly, those economies were able to start

developing. They were able to do things that their imperial

masters had prevented them from doing.